Maneka Gandhi
In vitro meat has become a serious scientific pursuit in the West. Research is being funded by people and companies who have already changed the world
Last week I met one of the most innovative people on the planet: Gunter Pauli. He has just released his book Blue Planet and I would recommend that each one of us buy it. It is full of innovative and easy solutions to make a healthy economy. He has invented a solar oven to bake bread for Johannesburg city. He runs his vehicles on turpentine made from the resin of pine trees. I bought his book for children. It is made from paper created by stone waste — a technology bought from him by China which plans to save 25 million trees every year. He has turned the economy of several regions around by simply teaching them an efficient mushroom growing technology. He definitely is one of my heroes.
Of all the technologies needed to save the Earth, the most important one concerns food. When you get meat from a chicken you get a single product but you invest energy, food and money into creating this animal with beaks, eyes, feathers and bones. We end up stripping these away to get the muscle tissue so why not just simply grow the tissue?
Meat — in its production and consumption — has adverse effects on human health, environment, and animal welfare. These include diseases associated with the over-consumption of animal fats; meat-borne pathogens and contaminants; antibiotic-resistant bacteria due to the use of antibiotics in livestock; inefficient use of resources in cycling grains and water through animals to produce protein; soil, air, and water pollution from farm animal wastes; and inhumane treatment of animals. These problems are huge. Nutrition-related diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, associated with the consumption of animal fats are now responsible for a third of global mortality. Foodborne pathogens found in meats, such as salmonella, campylobacter, pathogenic E coli, Avian influenza, and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) are responsible for millions of deaths.
Obtaining nutrients from meat, rather than directly from plants, uses far more cropland, water, fertilizer, pesticides, and energy. Given the inputs required to house, transport, and slaughter animals; transport and process feed grains; and transport and process meat, intensive meat production is only 10 per cent as energy efficient as soybean production.
Billions of tons of farm animal wastes are produced. Animal feed and meat production is responsible for the pesticide contamination of water, heavy metal contamination of soil, and acid rain from ammonia emissions. In addition the greenhouse gas, methane, comes from meat animals.
But will people leave meat easily even if they know it is not good for them? No. You have to look at the smokers to realize that. There need to be companies that produce meat, its taste and texture but without its problems.
There are two types of meat substitutes that have come into the market: Made from plants proteins or from animal tissues grown in cultures.
The production of meat in vitro, in a cell culture, begins by taking cells from a farm animal and proliferating them in a nutrient-rich medium. Cells are capable of multiplying so many times in culture that, in theory, a single cell could be used to produce enough meat to feed the global population for a year. After the cells are multiplied, they are attached to a sponge-like “scaffold” and soaked with nutrients. They may also be mechanically stretched to increase their size and protein content. The resulting cells can then be harvested, seasoned, cooked, and consumed as sausages, hamburgers, or chicken nuggets.
In vitro meat has become a serious scientific pursuit in the West. Research is being funded by people and companies who have already changed the world.
Months ago I wrote about Muufrii, the company headed by Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi that is making real milk from animal cells. They are being funded by Horizons Ventures from Hong Kong. Last week I wrote about two more companies: New Harvest and Modern Meadows which is making Bioleather: real leather made in a lab from tissue cells.
Some more people and organisations are changing the world. Clara Foods, a company in San Francisco owned by Arturo Elizondo (elizondo.ar@gmail.com), a graduate from Harvard and David Anchel (davidanchel@gmail.com), makes chicken-free egg whites. Clara is not a plant based alternative nor is it vegan. It is the exact same egg white made without the chicken. Once the egg white is ready it will impact consumer choices in the near future allowing people to eat this instead of what comes from factory farming.
Impossible Foods’ have selected proteins and nutrients from greens, seeds, and grain to recreate the experience of meat and dairy products. The company was founded by Patrick O Brown, a Stanford University biologist who believed that people would never give up the foods they love until new choices were even more delicious. Its fake meat looks like meat, bleeds like meat, and even sizzles on the grill. The secret is “plant blood” The thin concoction that looks like blood has the same metallic taste and is derived from the molecule found in haemoglobin that makes blood red and steak taste like steak. This bioengineered blood comes from plants. Their target: the hard core beef lover. Impossible Foods has attracted $ 75 million funding from Microsoft Corp, Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures and dozens of venture-capital firms.
San Francisco-based Hampton Creek led by Josh Tetrick is best known for its egg-free condiment Just Mayo. It abolishes chicken eggs from the diet by substituting proteins extracted from plants for eggs. Their immediate goal is to create Just Scramble, a liquid scrambled egg made from plant proteins in 2015.
The company’s investors include Horizons Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, the TM Lin family, owners of Uni-President Enterprises and Southeast Asia’s Far East Organization, DeepMind Technologies (now owned by Google), Collaborative Fund, Founders Fund, Braintree founder Bryan Johnson, Nick Pritzker’s Tao Capital Partners, Blue Bottle Coffee executive chairman Bryan Meehan, and Jean Pigozzi.
Gardein started by Yves Potvin in British Columbia, Canada, is making meat-like food. Its products range from dozens of varieties of chicken, sausages, turkey, beef and pork made from soy, wheat and pea proteins, vegetables, and ancient grains
There is a wave of alternative meat and dairy producers springing up. Beyond Meat, of El Segundo, California, sells “chicken” strips and beef made of pea protein. Sand Hill Foods makes cheese from nuts.
These companies are backed by Silicon Valley’s best known names. The investors are putting money into important, world-changing causes that will make them money. The logic: our population will hit 9 billion soon, and this population will need more efficiently created food.
To join the animal welfare movement contact gandhim@nic.in, www.peopleforanimalsindia.org